The effect of exercise on short-term memory subsystems

Due to the arousal increment, physical exercise has been shown to improve cognitive abilities such as frontal and long-term memory processes. In the present work we aim at understanding whether different types of physical exercise -i.e. team-games, mainly relying on visuo-spatial abilities, and circuits, mainly relying on motor patterns- might specifically modulate different short-term-memory (STM) subsystems. We compared the performances on verbal, visuo-spatial, and motor STM spans in 3 groups of 10-11-years-old children: the control group was tested before and after an Italian class, the second group before and after 40-minutes on a circuit exercise and the third group before and after 40-minutes of team-game. Besides a general incremented performance, a double dissociation emerged: while the circuit improved the motor span, the team-game did the same for the visuo-spatial span However, no effect emerged in the control group. The finding might cast useful insight about how structuring specific training activities for children with learning deficits because it claims the specific positive effects of sport on different cognitive abilities.